Series
Dune
4 games, 1992–2001.
Games
Interactive: timeline (needs JavaScript)
The series by yearMechanics
A marked cell changed from the game before. “Uses” means the game has the mechanic, with no variant recorded yet.
Every claim, by mechanic and game
| Concept | Dune II
1992 | Dune 2000
1998 |
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| Construction | - A factory or construction yard counts a build down from 256 × the item's build time. On each structure tick, every 30 game-timer ticks at normal game speed, a builder at full health takes 256 off the count (less for a computer house; dune2/ai-build-speed) and pays the build cost ÷ build time, carrying fractions of a credit in 1/256ths; a damaged builder takes off and pays only its share of full health (hit points × 256 ÷ maximum) each tick. When its owner can't pay a tick's share, the build waits, and a player's build goes on hold with a message. Computed: at full health an item takes its build time in structure ticks and costs about its build cost, which OpenDUNE's 60 Hz game timer makes half a second per unit of build time at normal speed. Code
- A computer house builds at no more than (20 × mission index + 95)/256 of full speed, where the first mission is index 0, and pays per tick in the same proportion. Computed: 95/256, about 37%, in the first mission, rising to 255/256 in the ninth. Code
- A computer house's construction yard builds only structures the house has lost. Removing a structure records its type and position in the first free of five slots per house; while the house's AI is active and it has credits, an idle yard builds the first recorded type it can build, places the finished structure at once at the recorded position, and clears the slot. If no slot matches or placement fails at every match, the house gets the cost back and the structure is dropped. Code
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| Damage formula | - The executable's unit table sets hit points, speed (out of 256), range in tiles, fire delay, and damage per shot: the Trike 100, 45, 3, 50, and 5; the Quad 130, 40, 3, 50, and 7; the combat tank 200, 25, 4, 80, and 25; the siege tank 300, 20, 5, 90, and 30; the rocket launcher 100, 30, 9, 120, and 75; the Devastator 400, 10, 5, 100, and 40; and the sonic tank 110, 30, 8, 80, and 60. PROFILE.INI, read from the game data at start, can replace any of these. Code
- A shot carries its unit's table damage, with no roll; only troopers and trooper squads firing beyond 2 tiles switch to a missile at damage − damage/4. The whole damage applies only at the point of impact, where a unit, or a structure on the impact tile, loses it from its hit points, down to 0, with no armor or defense stat; units farther from the point take less (dune2/splash). Units flagged to fire twice (among them the Trike, Quad, rocket launcher, siege tank, and Devastator) follow a shot with a second after a delay of 5 rather than twice their fire delay (at normal game speed), but only while above half health; every fire delay gets 0 or 1 added at random. Code
- A shell or missile damages where it explodes, not the unit it was fired at: the explosion damages every unit within one tile of the point (two for the Death Hand explosion), its own side's included, by the damage halved once per quarter tile of distance, so full within a quarter tile, half to a half, a quarter to three quarters, and an eighth to one tile; the frigate and bullets in flight take none. A structure on the impact tile takes the full damage. A shell flies to the target's position at the moment of firing and explodes there, or earlier on a wall, structure, or mountain tile in its path; a turret's shell passes over its own side's walls and structures. Code
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| Hit chance | | |
| Resource harvesting | - Each time a harvester's script calls
Script_Unit_Harvest while the harvester stands on spice or thick spice with a load below 100, the load grows by 0 or 1 at random, capped at 100, and in 1 call out of 32 the tile loses a level: thick spice becomes spice, and spice becomes sand. The status line reports the load as a percentage full. Code - A refinery empties a docked harvester a step at a time: each call to
Script_Structure_RefineSpice moves up to 3 load units at full health, 2 once damaged, and 1 below 171/256 of full health (computed from hp × 256 / max × 3 / 256, at least 1), and pays 7 credits per unit to the player, or 6 to 9 at random per call to a computer house; the next call waits 6 script ticks. Computed: a full harvester (100) is worth 700 credits to the player. Code - Each refinery stores 1,005 credits and each spice silo 1,000 (the structure table's defaults). On each house tick, credits above a house's storage are lost, except that the player keeps the mission's starting credits as a floor until storage passes them. OpenDUNE moved this check: its comment says the original ran it outside the per-house loop, and enhancement.txt says 1.07 thereby updated only the house that owns the latest structure. In the original mode, a structure still being built also counts toward storage. Code
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| Structure decay | - From the third mission on, every 10,800 game-timer ticks at normal game speed, each structure marked as degrading loses hit points while it stands above half its table maximum: 3 for the Harkonnen, 2 for the Ordos, and 1 for every other house. Placement marks a structure when any footprint tile lacks a concrete slab, except a construction yard, which never counts missing slabs; in the original mode it marks every structure placed, slabs or not, and OpenDUNE's enhanced mode (the default) leaves a construction yard and a structure built wholly on slabs unmarked. Structures a scenario places start unmarked, and slabs and walls never decay. Computed: OpenDUNE's 60 Hz timer makes the interval 3 minutes, and a structure placed with no slab, which starts at half health, doesn't decay until repaired above it. Code
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| Structure placement | - A structure fits where every footprint tile is rock (entirely or mostly), a concrete slab, or a destroyed wall, with no unit or structure on it; slabs and the construction yard can't go on a slab. For the player, one of the tiles ringing the footprint, corners included, must also hold one of the player's structures, or a slab or wall the player owns; the construction yard is exempt, and a computer house's placement skips the check. For every structure but slabs and the construction yard, which never count missing slabs, the footprint tiles without a slab take (maximum hit points ÷ 2) × (tiles without a slab) ÷ (footprint tiles) off the new structure's starting hit points. Computed: such a structure placed with no slab starts at half health. Code
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| Tech tree | - The executable's structure table sets, among others, a concrete slab at 5 credits, 16 build-time units, and 20 hit points; a windtrap at 300, 48, and 200; a refinery at 400, 80, and 450; a spice silo at 150, 48, and 150; an outpost at 400, 80, and 500; a light factory at 400, 96, and 350; a heavy factory at 600, 144, and 200; and a palace at 999, 130, and 1,000. Each row also names the structures a house must own first and the first mission it can be built in; code moves the light factory's first mission from 3 to 2 for every house but the Harkonnen. PROFILE.INI, read from the game data at start, can replace a row's cost, time, hit points, and first mission, along with its fog radius and its build, target, and sort priorities. Code
- The player's construction yard offers a structure once the house owns every structure in its row's requirement set, the mission number has reached the row's first mission, the house may build it, and the yard's upgrade level is high enough. Two exceptions are coded: for the Harkonnen, the WOR, which trains troopers, needs no barracks and opens from the second mission; for other houses, the light factory opens from the second mission. A computer house's yard skips the requirement set and the upgrade level. Code
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